Optical character recognition software is used in various disciplines for identifying characters on documents. Many entities receive thousands of payment documents daily. These payments may be mailed by the entities' customers. Most payments may include a check and a remit stub. The remit stub may include identifying customer information.
Some of the received payments may include neatly written checks and properly completed remit stubs. Other received payments may include illegible checks and blank remit stubs. Yet other received payments may include barely legible checks and partially completed remit stubs.
Properly completed checks and remit stubs may require relatively less human intervention to review and process than the incorrect or illegible payments. In fact, the proper payments may, in certain circumstances, not require human intervention at all. The mediocre payments may require more review time than the optimum payments, though less review time than the illegible payments. The mediocre payments may require minimal human intervention while illegible payments may require more significant human analysis.
Conventionally, payments were processed either in a straight through processing (“STP”) system that did not utilize human intervention, or in a verification processing system that utilized two operators functioning with two distinct computers. Many payments did not qualify for STP processing and therefore were being processed in the verification system. Although these payments did not qualify for STP processing, many of them do not require the higher-level, more intense, verification system (which utilizes additional computer and human resources). Therefore, it would be desirable to create a pre-verification layer of the processing system. It would be desirable for the pre-verification layer to focus on providing limited computer and human resources to mediocre payments which do not qualify for STP, but do not require the higher-level verification system. It may be desirable because the pre-verification system may conserve both human and computer resources by limiting the allocation of those resources to payments which do not require them.